"If the European discovery of human inhabitants in the New World didn't defeat the argument for design, then neither will the discovery of inhabitants on New Worlds."

There was considerable debate back then about whether Native Americans were humans, and thus couldn't (under an interpretation of God's law) be enslaved, or were not humans and thus fair game. We all know how that one came out.

There's pretty good evidence, I think, that 'intelligent design' was first developed by the Stoics. (There are traces of it in Plato, and even the Pre-Socratics, but the Stoics had to formulate a response to Aristotle and to Epicurus.)

That's part of why they're able to claim that it's not religious. (Though it is a metaphysical doctrine.) The Deists, who revived 'the argument from design' as an a posteriori argument for the existence of God -- and thus distinguishing the question of God's existence from the question of the authority of Scripture, were strongly influenced by Stoicism. So the line of transmission from Stoics to Deists, and from Deists to "design theorists", is fairly clear.

I don't think these comparisons are helpful. Irreducible complexity is (I think) a newer idea than natural selection, but so what? And the heliocentric model of the Solar System goes back at least to Aristarchus (around 250 BC). Does that count for or against it?

About Me

John (catshark) Pieret is a professional loudmouth and troublemaker with an abiding interest in preventing creationist promotion of ignorance in public education. He once could be frequently found wasting his and others' time in the usenet group "talk.origins" but times change.
He was also the editor of the resource known as "The Quote Mine Project" at the Talk Origins Archive.